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THE 



ADVANTAGES AND THE DANGERS 



AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 



32) H S © W IB 



DELIVERED ON THE DAY PRECEDING 



THE ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT 



JULY 26, 1836. 



BY GULIAN C. VERPLANCK, 

One of the Regents of the University of the State of New-York, 



NEW-YORK: 
WILEY AND LONG, 161 BROADWAY, 

1836. 



. 60337 

NEW-YORK : 

PRINTED BY WILLIAM OSBORN, 

88 William-Street. 



THE 



ADVANTAGES AND THE DANGERS 



AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 



DISCOURSE 



The actual state and the probable future prospects 
of our country, resemble those of no other land, and 
are without a parallel in past history. Our immense 
extent of fertile territory opening an inexhaustible 
field for successful enterprise, thus assuring to indus- 
try a certain reward for its labors, and preserving the 
land, for centuries to come, from the manifold evils of 
an overcrowded, and consequently degraded popula- 
tion — our magnificent system of federated republics, 
carrying out and applying the principles of represen- 
tative democracy to an extent never hoped or ima- 
gined in the boldest theories of the old speculative 
republican philosophers, the Harringtons, Sydneys 
and Lockes of former times — the re-action of our po- 
litical system upon our social and domestic concerns, 
bringing the influence of popular feeling and public 
opinion to bear upon all the affairs of life in a degree 
hitherto wholly unprecedented — the unconstrained 



b THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

range of freedom of opinion, of speech, and of the 
press, and the habitual and daring exercise of that 
Uberty upon the highest subjects — the absence of all 
serious inequality of fortune and rank in the condi- 
tion of our citizens — our divisions into innumerable 
religious sects, and the consequent co-existence, never 
before regarded as possible, of intense religious zeal, 
with a great degree of toleration in feeling and per- 
fect equality of rights — our intimate connexion with 
that elder world beyond the Atlantic, communicating 
to us, through the press and emigration, much of good 
and much of evil not our own, high science, refined 
art, and the best knowledge of old experience, as 
well as prejudices and luxuries, vices and crimes, 
such as could not have been expected to spring up in 
our soil for ages — all these, combined with nume- 
rous other peculiarities in the institutions and in the 
moral, civil and social condition of the American peo- 
ple, have given to our society, through all its rela- 
tions, a character exclusively its own, peculiar and 
unexampled. 

Circumstances and causes such as these, wide, 
general and incessantly operative, thus pervading the 
whole mass of the community, cannot fail, in some 
way or other, to reach and powerfully affect every in- 
dividual. Any American citizen who will look about 
him with an attentive eye, and then turn his con- 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR, 7 

templation inward upon himself, and examine his 
own breast and his own hfe, will readily perceive how 
sovereignly some or other of these external causes 
control his fortunes, direct his destinies, and mould 
his habits and his conduct, swaying or guiding his 
tastes, his reason, his feelings, or his affections. But 
if these can thus reach the humblest citizen, how 
much more decided must be their effect upon the man 
of native talent and improved intellect ! As his mind 
expands itself more largely on the surface of society, 
as it enters with a bolder ambition or a keener 
relish into the concerns of men, the pursuits of 
fame, of power, or of knowledge, just so in propor- 
tion must he sympathize more readily with the sur- 
rounding world, and in acting upon many, must feel 
more sensibly the reciprocal action of the greater 
mass upon himself. Hence, all that is singular and 
peculiar in our country, her people or her institu- 
tions, will be in some sort imaged in his mind, and 
will operate upon his mental constitution as silently 
but as certainly as his physical frame is affected by 
the food that sustains him, or the air that he breathes. 
It is, therefore, gentlemen, that I have thought 
that I could not more usefully discharge the duty as- 
signed to me by your kind partiality, or select a theme 
more appropriate to the annual academic celebration 
of a college, which already boasting among its 



8 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

alumni so large a proportion of the active talent of 
our state, continues annually to swell that number by 
a numerous body of our most promising youth, than 
to call your attention to the consideration of the bless- 
ings and advantages resulting from the political 
and social condition of our republic, to the Ameri- 
can scholar — not merely in common to him with the 
rest of his fellow-citizens, but to him especially and 
above others, as an educated and intellectual man. 

These are blessings and advantages, in them- 
selves peculiar, unrivalled, inestimable ; still, like 
all other temporal goods, they are not unmixed with 
evil, not unaccompanied by dangers, always liable 
to abuse. Like, too, to the other gifts of the Most 
High, intrusted to man for the use of his fellow men, 
they impose upon their possessor weighty, solemn 
and holy duties. 

It is then of these blessings and advantages of the 
American scholar, their accompanying dangers and 
their attendant duties, that I now purpose to speak 
to you. 

The subject ought certainly to interest those 
whom I am called to address, for it is of themselves 
that I must speak. From the lips of wisdom and 
genius, the theme could not fail to be fruitful of 
the deepest and most precious instruction. For 
myself, and the very imperfect views I am about to 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 



lay before you, I can claim no other weight or autho- 
rity, than what may arise from the fact, that these 
are neither the vague speculations of a politi- 
cal theorist, nor the rant of patriotic declamation. 
They are sober and deliberate opinions, the results 
of much opportunity of observation, and that by no 
means careless or hasty, and formed by one not in- 
different to the imperfections of our political or social 
system, or unwilling to confess them — not blind to 
the faults and errors of his country or his countrymen, 
but who has yet never wavered or faltered in his 
veneration for the sacred cause of repubhcan liberty, 
or in his confidence of the ultimate and certain ten- 
dency of our free institutions to promote truth and 
justice, to diffuse happiness and virtue. 

First of all then — We all know and feel that every 
thing in the condition and prospects of our country 
tends to excite and maintain a bold and stirring acti- 
vity of thought and action throughout the whole 
community. Nothing is allowed to remain stagnant 
or dormant. Every mind is compelled, sometimes 
in despite of its own inclinations, to partake of the 
buoyant spirit, the restless mobility, the irrepressible 
energy of youth and hope. 

In most other lands society moves with steady 
regularity, in one slow, sure and accustomed round. 
Each ascending step in the scale of wealth and dis- 



10 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

tinction is completely filled up, and the Tast majority, 
doomed to hereditary ignorance and privation, must 
be content to pass their whole lives where birth or 
accident has first placed them. Feeling no stimulus 
to exertion, besides that of daily want, their desires and 
their hopes confi)rm themselves to the narrow scale 
of their regular toils and their humble enjoyments. 
But with us, commerce, arts, agriculture, enterprise, 
adventure, ambition, are crowding and hurrying 
every man forward. Our past is but brief. We can 
scarcely be said to have a present — certainly we 
have none for mere indolent enjoyment. We are all 
pressing and hastening forward to some better future. 
No single mind can well resist the general impulse. 
The momentum of the whole mass of society, com- 
posed of myriads of living forces, is upon each indi- 
vidual, and he flies forward with accelerated velo- 
city, without any other power over his own motion 
than that of the direction of its course. The univer- 
sal ardor is contagious, and we all rush into the 
throng of life, and are swept along by its broad, re- 
sistless current. 

Least of all can the mind, formed to liberal stu- 
dies, habituated from early youth to the employment 
of its most vigorous faculties, resist the wide spread 
sympathy. " The clear spirit," to use Milton's 
phrase, " nursed up with brighter influences and with 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 11 

a soul enlarged to the dimensions of spacious and 
high knowledge," sees in every direction careers of 
honor, or of usefulness open to its exertions, and 
tasking its noblest powers. For with us talent can- 
not well slumber ; knowledge may always find some 
fit application. 

Travel elsewhere, and where is it that you may not 
find talent chilled and withered by penury, or pro- 
found learning wasted on the drudgery of elementa- 
ry instruction, or else " lost in a convent's solitary 
gloom t" With us this need never be. In fact, it 
is seldom long so, unless from the positive fault of 
the possessor. Excepting those melancholy cases, 
where some unavoidable calamity has weighed 
down the spirits and extinguished joy and hope for 
ever, knowledge and ability cannot well run here to 
waste without their voluntary degradation by gross 
vice or the maddest imprudence. But I do not 
now speak of the varied opportunities for the suc- 
cessful exertion of matured, cultivated talent, or the 
substantial rewards that its exercise may win, so 
much as of the still greater advantage which that 
talent may derive to itself from the prevailing 
activity and energy that animate the whole commu- 
nity. Under that strong and contagious stimulus' 
the faculties are awakened, the capacity enlarged? 
the genius roused, excited, inspired. The mind is 



12 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OP 

not suffered to brood undisturbed over its own little 
stock of favorite thoughts, treading the same un- 
ceasing round of habitual associations, until it be- 
comes quite incapable of fixing its attention upon 
any new object, and its whole existence is but a 
dull, drowsy dream. On the contrary, it is forced to 
sympathize with the living world around, to enter 
into the concerns of others and of the public, and 
to partake, more or less, of the cares and the hopes 
of men. Thus every hour it imbibes, unconsciously, 
new and strange knowledge, quite out of the sphere 
of its own personal experience. Thus it receives, 
and in its turn spontaneously communicates that 
bright electric current that darts its rapid course 
throughout our whole body politic, removing every 
sluggish obstruction, and bracing every languid 
muscle to vigorous toil. As compared with the 
more torpid state of society exhibited elsewhere, to 
live in one such as this, is like emerging from the 
fogs of the lowland fens heavy with chilling pes- 
tilence, 

" — -the dull pacific air 



Where mountain zephyr neyer blew, 
The marshy level dank and bare, 
That Pan, that Ceres never knew — " 



and ascending to inhale the exhilarating mountain 
atmosphere, where the breeze is keen and pure, and 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 13 

the springs gush bright from their native rock, be- 
stowing on the children of the hills the bounding 
step, the strong arm, the far seeing eye, and the 
stout heart. It is much then to breathe such a 
mental air from earliest youth. It is much to be edu- 
cated and formed under such potent and perpetual 
stimulants to intellectual development. But for a 
mind thus formed and framed for vigorous and 
effective action, it is not less necessary that fitting 
occupations may be found for its nobler qualities 
and powers. This is much for worldly success. It 
is every thing for honor, for conscience, for content, 
for beneficence. Let genius, however brilliant, how- 
ever gifted with rare, or copious, or varied acquire- 
ments, be but doomed to labor for selfish objects, for 
personal necessities and sensual gratifications, and for 
those only — and its aspirations too will become low, 
its desires sordid, and its powers (adroit, doubtless, 
and very eflfective as to their accustomed occupa- 
tions) will dwindle and become enfeebled, until they 
are quite incapable of any generous and magnani- 
mous undertaking. 

But with us the man of intellectual endowment is 
not so " cabined, cribbed, bound in" to his own 
puny cares. Far otherwise ; his generous ambition, 
his large philanthrophy, his zeal for the service of his 
Ood or his country, may spread themselves abroad 



14 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

" as wide and general as the casing air," without 
finding any check or barrier to their farthest range. 
In the eternal order of Providence, minds act and 
re-act, and become the transcripts and reflections of 
each other, thus multiplying and perpetuating the evils 
or the excellence of our short being upon this globe. 
It is not the exclusive prerogative of the great, the 
eloquent, the chosen sons of genius or of power, 
who can speak trumpet-tongued to millions of their 
fellow creatures from the high summits of fame or 
authority, thus to be able to extend themselves in the 
production of good or evil far around and forward. 
We are all of us, in some sort, as waves in the 
shoreless ocean of human existence. Our own 
petty agitations soon die away, but they can extend 
themselves far onward and onward, and there are 
oftentimes circumstances which may cause those 
billows to swell as they roll forward, until they rise 
into a majestic vastness which it could scarce seem 
possible that our puny efforts could have ever set in 
motion. Such favoring circumstances, in other na- 
tions comparatively rare, are here the common bless- 
ings of our land. We have a population doubling 
and re-doubling with a steady velocity so unexam- 
pled in former history, as to have utterly confounded 
the speculations of all older political philosophy. 
We have a territory, which rapidly as that popula- 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 15 

tion subdues the forest and covers the desert, has 
still ample room for coming generations. These 
things alone are enormous elements in the mighty- 
process of social melioration. Whatever is effected 
in removing any of the evils that afflict those about 
us, must, ere long, reach far beyond us and beyond 
them, to other and more numerous generations, to 
distant fields, as yet silent and desolate, but destined 
soon to swarm vv^ith a busy multitude. The charac- 
ter, knowledge and happiness of that future and dis- 
tant multitude, are now in our hands. They are to 
be moulded by our beneficent labors, our example, 
our studies, our philanthropic enterprise. Thus the 
" spirit of our deeds," long after those deeds have 
passed away, will continue to walk the earth, from 
one ocean-beat shore of our continent to the other, 
scattering blessings or curses upon after- times. 

Consider too the general elementary instruction 
of this nation — too slight, meagre and superficial in- 
deed to content the patriot as an ultimate end where- 
with to rest satisfied, but admirable as the means of 
spreading information and pouring a bright flood of 
light and truth over our whole continent. Books, 
newspapers, periodicals, are scattered profusely 
through the land, and present to a large proportion 
of our population their favorite and most unfailing 
relaxation from business and toil. Our people are 



16 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

daily, hourly habituated to discussions of the most 
interesting nature, sometimes upon the most ab- 
struse, frequently upon the most important sub- 
jects of human interest. All our experience, our 
modes of business and ways of life, have a strong 
tendency to teach us to regard science, not as a 
thing mysterious and solitary, never to be mixed with 
common life and its ordinary thoughts and concerns, 
but as an exalted and munificent benefactor, con- 
stantly and profusely contributing to our welfare and 
happiness. Hence it requires nothing but the 
steady and well-directed efforts of enlightened and 
liberal minds to make a very large part, and that in 
many respects too, the best part of science, familiar 
and popular to a degree which the recluse scholar of 
former days could never imagine. Much indeed of 
the best science can only be useful, in any high 
degree, by becoming thus familiar and popular ; for 
unless it be so, it must remain a barren theory, dry 
and useless. 

This is eminently and self-evidently true in all 
political and economical science. It is equally so 
of all ethical truth : and as it is the beautiful charac- 
teristic of the loftiest and most perfect science, most 
rapidly to simplify and generalize its knowledge as 
it increases its stores, it is not easy to conjecture any 
assignable limit beyond which the grand conclusions 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 17 

(at least) of sound scientific investigation, and 
the results of learned labor, may not belaid open to 
the hberal curiosity of the humblest artisan. In the 
same or some similar way, the choicest refinements 
of classical taste, and the congenial study of the 
remains of ancient genius, which beautify and enrich 
the scholar's mind, may be made through him to 
enlarge, to elevate, and ennoble the general mind of 
his country. 

But these are not the only facilities we enjoy for 
making the acquisitions of learning profitable to all, 
and for bringing intellectual force to bear upon its 
appropriate objects. The quick and keen sense of 
self-interest, that gives such sagacity and energy to 
the business operations of this country, is equally 
propitious to the success of every art, every discovery, 
invention, undertaking, and science, that involves in 
it any amount of practical improvement or power. 
Hence, whatever of theoretical science, inventive 
skill, ingenious speculation, or reasoning eloquence, 
can be made to tell upon any of the multitudinous 
affairs making up the business of life, or to minister 
in any way to the increased power or enjoyment of 
man, will soon find ready attention for their claims. 
Here no prejudices in favor of time-honored usages 
are strong enough long to resist the advance of scien- 
tific improvement or wise innovation. Society is not 

3 



18 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

divided into castes, each one of them watching with 
jealous vigilance against any encroachment of their 
several exclusive walks by any rude intruder from 
another class, themselves clinging to the settled 
usages and old forms of their own clan, with the 
steady pertinacity of men whose unexamined preju- 
dices are interwoven with their earliest habits and 
their most valuable personal interests. If Science, 
descending from her starry throne in the heavens, 
light the student to any discovery or invention in 
any manner applicable to the wants of his fellow 
creatures — if Genius prompts the lofty thought — 
if love of God or of man inspire the generous design, 
no matter how the novelty may astonish for the 
moment, no matter what prejudices may be shocked, 
no matter what interests may be alarmed and band 
themselves against the innovator, let him go on un- 
dismayed. He advances to certain victory. 

But it has often been objected that this all-absorb- 
ing gravitation towards the useful, the active, and the 
practical, in our country, propels every student from 
his most favorite studies into the struggles, the com- 
petition, and tumult of life, and is thus fatal at once 
to all recondite and curious learning, to deep attain- 
ment in pure science or polished excellence in 
elegant art and literature. There is certainly some 
portion of truth in this objection, and yet but a por- 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 19 

tion only. Where the demands for competent 
abihty are so pressing, and the temptations to em- 
ploy that ability in such occupations as bring with 
them instant rewards are so great, it is quite certain 
that but few will be found inclined to spend their 
lives in studies which have no interest for others, 
and no perceptible bearing on private or public 
good. When, however, we consider the wonderful 
connexion and inter -dependance of all knowledge, 
made more and more manifest by every day's advance 
in science, so as almost to prove by an accumulation 
of particular examples the sublime hypothesis of the 
old philosophy, " that by circuit of deduction, all truth 
out of any truth may be concluded ;" when we 
reflect how singularly adapted the various parts of 
knowledge are to the individual tastes and character 
of difl'erent men, so as to seize and draw them as 
with an irresistible mental magnetism to their several 
studies, we cannot, I think, doubt that all that is most 
valuable in science or literature, will find votaries 
among us, who, not content to make such studies the 
amusements of their leisure or to devote a life of 
monastic gloom to their solitary worship, will make 
or find for them a fit application. The experience of 
scientific investigation has shown that such applica- 
tion of the test of reality and experiment to theoretic 
truth, has not only often thrown a clearer light on that 



20 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OP 

theory, at once limiting its generalities and confirm- 
ing its evidence, but has also evolved new com- 
binations, suggested new inferences, and mani- 
fested higher laws. Art more than repays its 
obligations to science. The large processes of 
manufactures have proved the best school of che- 
mical discovery. Natural knowledge has contri- 
buted largely to medical skill, and it has in turn 
received its most precious accessions from the obser- 
vation of the physician. The abstrusest speculations 
of the metaphysician, have found their place in those 
controversies of theologians that rend the rehgious 
world, as well as in questions of political discussion, 
of legislation, and of jurisprudence. Thus contem- 
plations, apparently the most shadowy, have often 
operated with the greatest efficiency upon the most 
engrossing concerns of daily life. 

Nevertheless, it may well be that there are some 
meditations so subtile and unreal, some branches 
of learning so remote from use, some laborious arts 
of refinement requiring for their successful cultiva- 
tion such silent abstraction and unremitting, undi- 
vided labor for years, that they can find no room amid 
the strife and hustle, the fumum, strepitumque, — the 
rail-road noise and rapidity of this work-day world of 
America. Be it so. We would not willingly lose 
them. For nothing that has filled the thoughts of 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 21 

the good and wise, or weaned men from sensual 
pleasure by the better attractions of art, taste or 
learning, can be without value and dignity. But 
if we must lose them, let us be content, and the 
more so, because their deprivation, if such be of 
necessity the case, is more than compensated by 
countervailing benefits resulting from the same 
causes. Such acquirements or accomplishments 
cannot flourish here, because they require the devo- 
tion of the whole man to their service, whilst the 
American man of letters is incessantly called off 
from any single inquiry, and allured or compelled 
to try his ability in every variety of human occu- 
pation. 

Though he may be laboriously devoted to the 
duties of a particular calling, or, on the other hand, 
exempted from the pressure of regular professional 
labor, no man of informed mind can with us exclude 
the surrounding world. The Quidquid agunt 
Jwmines, familiarity with men and their business is 
forced upon him, and it is a rare thing indeed if he 
can remain a cool looker-on. It may be patriotism, 
it may be humanity, that animates him — it may be 
personal pride, or political zeal, or ambition, or per- 
haps merely the mysterious sympathy of universal 
example ; but whatever may be the special motive in 
the individual, no scholar, no professional student 



22 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

or practitioner can well remain the mere man of 
books. If in this acquaintance with many other 
matters, something is lost as to particular skill and 
minute accuracy of knowledge, assuredly much more 
is gained in the healthful development of the facul- 
ties, the enlargement of the understanding, the more 
equable poise of the judgment, and the richness, 
variety, and originality of the materials for reflection, 
combination, or invention thus stored in the memory. 
If awed by that veneration the scholar naturally 
feels for those who consecrate their days and nights 
to learning, alternating only between books and the 
pen, you hesitate to allow the superiority conferred 
by this variety and versatility over the man of one 
solitary study, let me appeal to the unvarying testi- 
mony of literary history for the proof. The great 
men of antiquity, the models of eloquence, the 
fathers of poetry, the teachers of ethical wisdom, 
the founders of that ancient jurisprudence, that still 
rules the greater part of the civilized world, were 
none of them solitary scholars ; none of them were 
contented with the " half wisdom of books" alone. 
They performed well all the duties of war and 
peace ; and their immortal works, beautiful in the 
severe simplicity of truth and nature, still remain 
" eternal monuments" — as Thucydides, in the 
calm consciousness of genius, has said of his own 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 23 

majestic history — eternal monuments for the good 
of after ages, of things which they had themselves 
seen and done. There was scarce one of them 
who could not, like Cicero, look back, with proud 
satisfaction, to his labors in the forum, the senate, 
and the field, disastrous ofttimes, but full of glory — 
^^ sum mi lahores nostri, magna compensati glorid, 
mitigantur^ and then turn to those studies which 
were the grace and crown of their prosperity, and 
the sure consolation of their misfortunes, " non 
modo sedatis molestiis jucunda, sed etiam hcBrentihus 
salutaria." 

The self-same lesson is taught in the history of the 
philosophy and literature of our own mother tongue. 
Whose are the venerated and enduring names — 
whose the volumes that we turn to, with reverent 
affection, as the oracles of just thought, or the ever 
fresh springing fountains of dehght '? Who were 
they from Bacon to our own Franklin — from Spenser 
and Shakspeare to Walter Scott, but men of those 
mixed pursuits, that multifarious instruction, that 
familiar intercourse with actual life, which narrow- 
minded learning would brand as the bane of philo- 
sophy, the destruction of letters. Compare their 
works with those of men devoted to literature alone, 

* De Oratore, Lib. II. 



24 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS GP 

and who looked at nothing beyond its precincts— the 
plodding compiler, the laborious collector of scien- 
tific trifles, valuable only as materials for some wiser 
mind to use, the herd of dealers in light literature, 
either the servile imitators of past excellence^ or the 
echoes of the follies of their day, or baser yet, the 
pandars to its vices. How short and fleeting has been 
their popularity ! Here and there one among the num- 
ber has deserved the gratitude of posterity by moral 
worth and well directed labor. His works keep an 
honored place in our libraries, but they rarely exer- 
cise a living sway over the opinions and tastes of 
nations. 

A mortal born he meets the general doom, 
But leaves, like Egypt's kings, a lasting tomb. 

Such is also the experience of the arts of taste and 
design. The father of the Italian arts, Leonardo 
da Vinci, was a scholar, a politician, a poet, a 
musician. Michael Angelo, the sublime and the 
holy, was still more universal. Sculptor, painter, 
poet, architect, engineer — we find him now painting 
his grand frescos, now modelling his gigantic statues, 
now heaving the dome of St. Peter's into the air, 
and now fortifying his loved Florence, the city of 
his affections, with a humble diligence and a pa- 
triot's zeal. There are no such artists now in Italy. 
The painters and sculptors with which it swarms, 



THE AMEPaCAN SCHOLAR. 25 

are devoted to painting and sculpture exclusively; 
but how do they compare as artists with their great 
predecessors 1 Could any authority whatever add 
weight to the facts I have just referred to, such 
would be found in the opinion of Milton himself. 
In a well known passage of one of those fervid 
and brilliant prose tracts of his youth, which (to use 
the noble metaphor of an eloquent critic) announced 
the Paradise Lost as plainly as ever the bright purple 
clouds in the east announced the rising of the sun ; 
Milton, with a sublime and determined confidence in 
his own genius, covenanted — for that is his remarka- 
ble expression — in some few years thereafter, to 
produce " a work not to be raised from the heats of 
youth or the vapors of wine, like that which flows 
at will from the pen of some vulgar amorist, nor by 
invocation of Memory and her syren sisters, but by 
devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit which can enrich 
with all utterance and knowledge, and send out his 
seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch 
and purify the lips of whom he pleases." " To this," 
he subjoins in a lower strain of eloquence, but with 
the same decision of tone — " to this must be added 
industrious and select readings, steady observation, 
and an insight into all seemly and generous arts and 
affairs." Had Milton confined himself to the studies 

of his library, or the halls of his university — had he not 

4 



26 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

thrown himself into the hottest conflicts of the day — 
had he not stood forth the terrible champion of free- 
dom of opinion and of republican liberty, raising on 
high his spirit-stirring voice in their defence in 
worst extremes, and " on the perilous verge of battle 
where it raged ;" had he not participated in counsel, 
in act, and in suffering with England's boldest spirits — 
had he not thus felt in himself, and seen in others, the 
" might of the unconquerable will," the unshaken, 
unseduced, unterrified constancy of faithful zeal and 
love, he would not have gained that insight into 
seemly and generous arts and affairs, that intimate 
acquaintance with the nobler parts of human nature 
that made him the greatest of poets. Had Milton 
lived always a recluse student, his learned fancy 
would undoubtedly have enriched his country's litera- 
ture with Lycidas and Comus, but the world would 
have wanted the Paradise Lost. 

But the American literary man has yet other rea- 
sons to be grateful for having been born in this age 
and country ; and they are reasons such as a mind 
cast in the grand antique mould of Milton's, would 
prize as most worthy of fervent thanksgiving. Every 
thing here is propitious to honest independence of 
thought. Such an independence is the presiding 
genius of all our institutions ; it is the vital spirit 
that gives life to the whole. Without this, our con- 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 27 

stitutions and laws, our external forms of equality, 
our elections, our representation, our boasted liberty 
of speech and of conscience, are but poor and beg- 
garly elements, shadows without substance, dead 
and worthless carcasses, from which the living soul, 
the grace, the glory, the strength, have for ever fled. 
It is not the parchment record of our constitutions, 
the bills of right, the trial by jury, the elective fran- 
chise, nor all the securities provided by the jealous 
wisdom of our fathers for the unrestrained exercise 
of liberty, that can call back this living spirit when 
once it has fled — no, nor the unrestrained press scat- 
tering its millions of daily sheets over the land, nor 
the representative halls echoing with their never- 
ending discussions. These cannot repair its loss, 
but they are all admirable agents in its production 
and preservation ; and there are besides other circum- 
stances in our condition not less favorable to this tem- 
per, than our political institutions. The numberless 
shades of opinions upon the doctrines of revelation, 
as well as upon other momentous concerns and du- 
ties, coming to us from the various stocks whence we 
descend, or the different influences under which our 
citizens grow up, with all the creeds, all the preju- 
dices, and all the knowledge of the old world pour- 
ing in upon them, though involving or producing 
dangerous errors, have yet a healthful efficacy in 



28 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

habituating men to the free use of their judgment, 
and the manly, direct avowal of their thoughts. 
Here there is no apparently general agreement 
of society to awe the mind from investigation of 
what claims to be certain and established truth. 
And when examination on any subject brings con- 
viction, the inquirer is seldom compelled to meet 
that hardest trial of human fortitude, the renuncia- 
tion of old associations and long cherished doctrines 
in the face of universal scorn and indignation, and 
without the solace of human sympathy. More 
than this : — that restlessness of enterprise, which 
alike nerves the frontier settler to the toils and ad- 
ventures of the wilderness, and kindles the young 
dreams of the political aspirant, which whitens the 
ocean with our canvass, drives the rail-road through 
the desert, and startles the moose at his watering- 
place, or scares the eagle from his high solitary 
perch with the sudden beat of the steam-boat's 
wheels— that one and the same ardent, restless spirit 
ruling our whole people, can have little commu- 
nion with that abject prostration of intellect, that 
makes man crouch before his fellow, submitting his 
reason and his conscience to another's will. It is 
thus that the adventurous ardor, so efficient in ex- 
ternal and material matters, naturally extends its 
energies to the moral and intellectual. Here 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 29 

are at once provided facilities for the propagation of 
truth, and securities for some portion, at least, of 
respect for conscientious error. 

It is not easy to realize the full value of the bless- 
ings made familiar to us by daily enjoyment, without 
some experience of their opposite evils. It is our 
happy fate to know nothing personally of the severer 
tyranny of power over the conscience. History can 
alone teach us what this is, and how to estimate 
duly our political advantages in this respect. What 
then is the history of human opinions but a long 
record of martyrdom for truth, for religion, for pri- 
vate conscience, for public liberty'! Every monu- 
ment of antiquity in the old world, like that one of 
" London's lasting shame," 

The Traitor^s Gate, miscalled, through which of yore 
Past Raleigh, Cranmer, Russel, Sydney, More, — * 

every vestige of the past recalls some remembrance 
of the " lifted axe, the agonizing wheel," the scaffold, 
the stake, and the fagot, on which the patriot poured 
out his life's blood, and where the martyr breathed 
forth in torture his last prayer of triumphant for- 
giving faith. But, traveller, stop not there to mourn. 



* These lines are quoted from memory, I believe from Rogers, and slightly 
varied. 



30 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

Rejoice rather — for these are the monuments of the 
victories of truth — of the triumph of the self-sustain- 
ing, immortal mind, over the impotence of transient 
power. The martyrs have conquered. Their sen- 
tence is reversed. Their tyrants have passed away 
with names blackened and branded by universal scorn. 
The cause for which they died has now mounted the 
seat of worldly empire, or else is enthroned still 
more regally in the hearts of millions. Mourn not 
for the martyrs. Mourn rather for truth suppressed 
by fear, for genius shrinking from the torture or the 
dungeon ; or, more melancholy still, deeming ease 
and wealth cheaply bought by the sacrifice of honor, 
of conscience, of faith, and of truth. Mourn for 
Galileo and Beranger, and a crowd of others as 
wise, and as good, and as weak as they were. Pity, 
but despise them not. Look to your own age, and 
then compare it with theirs. Look to your own 
country and her laws, and then look to theirs. Be 
thankful for your happier lot, yet fear — lest you 
yourselves should some time yield up your integrity 
under trials that, weighed with theirs, are as light 
as air. 

Well has a philosophical poet* of our own age 
enforced the deep moral to be drawn from such 
examples. 

* Coleridge. 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 31 

" Ye who secure midst trophies not your own, 
Judge him who won them, when he stood alone, 
And proudly talk of ' Galileans fall.' 
Oh, first the age and then the man compare, 
That age how dark, congenial minds how rare ; 
No host of friends, with kindred zeal did burn. 
No throbbing hearts awaited his return. 
Prostrate alike, when prince and peasant fell, 
He only, disenchanted from the spell, 
Like the weak worm that gems the starless night. 
Moved in the scanty circlet of his light. 
And was it strange that he withdrew the ray 
That did but guide the night birds to their preyV 

But whilst there are great poUtical and pubhc causes 
to shield the American mind from exposure to the 
stern tyranny of power, there are others less conspi- 
cuous and prominent, equally protecting it from more 
degrading tendencies. T do not count as the least 
among these the absence of marked difference of 
hereditary or permanent rank. It is impossible for 
any one, who has not personally witnessed it, to 
comprehend the strange reverence to worse and infe- 
rior men than themselves, the submisson of the un- 
derstanding to the vices and caprices of those they 
deem the higher orders, which beginning with early 
youth, and confirmed by education, clings throughout 
life to thousands of the well-instructed and the good. 
I well remember the astonishment expressed to me, 
some years ago, by several learned and respectable 
ministers of the gospel in Great Britain, at the ease 



32 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OP 

with which an eloquent divine of our country (the 
late Dr. Mason) conversed and argued with, and 
even contradicted, a royal duke who had honored 
an anniversary charity festival with his presence. 
They accounted for this phenomenon not by ascribing 
it to its right cause, the temper and education of his 
country, but by attributing it to his presumed habits 
of familiar association with the political dignitaries of 
his own land. This feeling struck me as the more 
remarkable, because these worthy men (several of 
whom enjoy an honorable distinction in the religious 
literary world) were themselves dissenters from the 
national established church, and almost republican 
opposers of the then administration of the state. It 
requires a very strong effort of mind, and often too 
as great an excitement of feeling, to throw of this 
prejudice ; and when it is thus thrown off, the danger 
is that it either runs into wild insubordination of just 
authority, or else lasts but for a time, till the fervor 
of youthful zeal is over, and the suggestions of inte- 
rested prudence concur with early opinions ; and 
then the half obliterated impressions of youth re- 
appear. 

Now the obvious tendency of all this is to bow 
down the intellect before authority, making the 
soul crouch and crawl before place, rank and dig- 
nity. I say that such is its tendency — for I should 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 33 

do foul wrong and insult to the deep serious thought 
of England and her native sturdy manliness, as well 
as to the enthusiastic intellectual daring of the con- 
tinental scholars, were I to say that such were the 
constant and necessary consequences of any exter- 
nal and artificial condition of social order whatso- 
ever—still less so of a mixed government like theirs. 
It is, however, an influence deeply deleterious to the 
right feeling of mental independence, and it is there- 
fore happy that it in no degree threatens us. But 
in other lands, pecuniary dependance is too often 
connected with this reverence for rank, so that 
they produce together the most complete vassalage. 
The market for intellectual labor is overstocked. 
Nature's rich banquet is crowded with titled and 
hereditary guests, " the table is full," To emerge 
from the crowd of menials, and obtain some share 
of the feast, the unbidden scholar must attach him- 
self to the train of a patron, and feed on the alms 
his niggard bounty may bestow. Such has been 
the degrading history of literary men, poets, au- 
thors, and, I blush to add, philosophers, through- 
out the world, for many centuries. And if in our 
own times the literature of France and of England 
have, in a good degree, freed themselves from that 
ignoble thraldom, this is mainly to be attributed to 
the growth of principles similar to our own, to the 



34 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

diffusion of knowledge amongst the people, to the 
rapid increase of commercial and manufacturing 
riches, all combining to build up the sovereignty of 
public opinion, and to make the patronage of aristo- 
cratic wealth more and more insignificant in compa- 
rison with the unpretending munificence of an edu- 
cated people^ Yet the causes which originally led 
to this degradation of the literary character remain, 
and much of the best talent of Europe still wears 
(as nearly the whole of it did for centuries) the 
galhng though gilded chain of patronage. 

Yet think what ills the scholar's life assail, 
Toil, envy, want, the pair 07i and the gc.ol, — 

said the indignant Johnson, filled as he was with 
habitual reverence for rank, yet resenting, with manly 
contempt, the wrongs of genius and the disgrace of 
letters. 

At a later period of his life, the same veteran au- 
thor recorded in his great English Dictionary the bit- 
ter result of his long and sad experience and that of 
his literary associates, by sarcastically defining the^^a- 
tron as being " commonly a wretch, who protects with 
insolence and is paid by flattery." The same sad 
story is told more in detail in the precarious depend- 
ant lives of the wits and poets of London and Paris 
during the reigns of Louis XIV., Charles IL, and the 



TH]E AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 35 

first and second Georges. It is written at large in 
their shameless flatteries, addressed to venal states- 
men and ribbald courtiers, embodied in servile dedica- 
tions, or embalmed in works where taste and fancy 
struggle in vain to rise under the load of baseness and 
pollution imposed upon the unhappy literary slave by 
his equally unhappy patron. The facility with which 
a sure and comfortable subsistence may be obtained 
in this country, and the certainty with which educa- 
ted talent, directed by ordinary discretion and indus- 
try, may obtain to a decent competency, are such as 
to exclude all temptation, much more all necessity, 
to follow in this respect the humiliating example of 
European learning. To such evils "the lack of 
means need never drive us." If dazzled by the false 
glitter of office, if bribed by the doles of political 
patronage, or by such paltry boons as private inte- 
rest can bestow, the American scholar is ever 
weak enough to sell his conscience, or bow down 
his independence before a master, he falls a volun- 
taiy victim. The sin is his own — his own be 
the shame. Let him not seek to divide it with his 
country. Is it not then a glorious privilege to be 
wholly free from the necessity of such dependence, 
never to be forced by the tyrannous compulsion of 
need to man-worship, the meanest of all idolatries'? 
Far nobler, far happier, than kings can make him, is 



36 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

the lot of him who dedicates his hfe and his intellect 
to instruct and delight the people — who looks to 
them not for alms or bounty, but for a just compen- 
sation in honor and in profit, for the pleasure or the 
instruction he affords them^who seeks to serve thenj 
as a friend, not to fawn on them as a flatterer — to 
please them or to teach them, yet as having a 
higher master and knowing the solemn responsibility 
of one who acts upon the happiness or the morals 
of many. Happy he who, in the discharge of such 
duties, leads none into dangerous error, lulls none 
into careless or contemptuous negligence of right, 
nor ever sullies the whiteness of an innocent mind. 
Happier — still happier, he who has scattered abroad 
into many hearts those moral seeds vyhence benevo- 
lent and heroic actions spring up, who has " given 
ardor to virtue and confidence to truth," or, in more 
sacred language, " has turned many unto righteous- 
ness." Such genius, fired from heaven's own light, 
will continue to the end of time to burn and spread, 
kindling congenial flames far and wide, until they 
lift up their broad united blaze on high, enlightening, 
cheering, and gladdening the nations of the earth. 

Nevertheless, sad experience has sometimes 
proved that he who draws his subsistence or his 
fame from the taste of a corrupted people, may 
debase and dishonor himself in ministering to the cor- 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 37 

rupted tastes of the million, as well as he who 
pandars to that of the corrupt aristocratic few. 

" The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give, 
For they who live to please, must please to live ;" 

And what is true of the drama, holds equally good 
of all the literature and the arts that minister to 
pleasure and entertainment. Yet the lure to evil 
from serving the many is far less than from serving 
the few. To one entire half of the great domain of 
mind it reaches not at all. The cultivator of 
mathematical and physical science, more fortunate in 
this than the man of letters, is wholly beyond such 
danger. All of his labors, in order to bring honor 
or advantage to himself, must be felt in the increased 
comforts of thousands, or the augmented power of 
his species. What a magnificent accompaniment 
is this thought to the other worldly rewards of his 
successful toils ! What a moral dignity does it give 
to the exploits of art and science, in themselves the 
most purely physical and mechanical ! 

But the man who aspires to guide or to please the 
minds of others by eloquence or literature, will soon 
find that, in proportion as he addresses himself to 
enduring pubhc interests or universal natural feel- 
ings in preference to those which are local or per- 
sonal, artificial or temporary, so his own genius will 



38 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

be elevated, and the ethical character of his 
thoughts and works ennobled and purified. For 
in order to advance those large public interests, he 
must look to the grand laws, political or moral, that 
govern human happiness. In order to touch the 
universal natural sensibilities, he must stir up the 
generous sympathies, that in individuals are entan- 
gled or choked with their peculiar vices, but still 
are common to human nature. He must rouse up 
the virtues that sleep in most hearts, but are dead in 
none. So only can he gain and keep a firm hold 
upon the public mind. Now in the very effort of so 
doing, his own littleness is insensibly lost in the 
greatness of a common humanity. He tasks himself 
to high purposes, and in that exertion brings forth 
powers he dreamt not of in himself. The author 
rises above the man. He becomes unto himself, 
his own " exceeding great reward." 

I was much struck, years ago, with an admirable 
application made by a veteran statesman of this 
general truth to a sound doctrine of political ethics. 
It is contained in that beautiful historical fragment 
left by the late Charles Fox — a work that, I know 
not why, has never obtained that reputation of which 
it seems to me to be eminently worthy. Whilst it 
vies in sober dignity with the best remains of clas- 
sical antiquity, it breathes throughout every page 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 39 

the same generous and manly benevolence that 
(whatever might have been his pubhc or his private 
fauks) marked the whole character of that frank 
and kind-hearted statesman. In relating the secret 
negotiation of James II. with the French court, by 
which the English king was to be furnished by Louis 
XIV. with pecuniary aid for the enslaving of his 
people, one of the very meanest and most criminal 
transactions recorded by modern history, the histo- 
rian stops to wonder and regret, that in company with 
several far inferior men, no unfit agents for such a 
business, are found named the able and eminent 
Lord Godolphin, and Lord Churchill, afterwards 
better known as the celebrated Duke of Marlbo- 
rough. " It is with difficulty," says he, "that the reader 
can persuade himself that the Godolphin and Chur- 
chill here named are the same persons who were after- 
wards, one in the cabinet and one in the field, the 
great conductors of the war of the succession. How 
little do they appear in one instance ! how great 
in the other! And the investigation of the cause to 
which this excessive difference is owing, will produce 
a most useful lesson. In the one case they were the 
tools of a king plotting against his people ; in the 
other, the ministers of a free government acting upon 
enlarged principles, and with energies which no state 
that is not in some degree republican, can supply. 



40 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

How forcibly must the contemplation of these men, 
in such opposite situations, teach persons engaged 
in political life, that a free and popular government 
is desirable, not only for the public good, but for their 
own greatness and consideration, for eveiy object of 
generous ambition." 

Every good citizen of our republic will readily 
acquiesce in the soundness of this political conclu- 
sion of the English statesman. But I do not hesi- 
tate to give the doctrine a much wider application, 
and to say that a state of society, free and popular, 
is eminently conducive to exalted principles of 
thought and action, and the best energies of intel- 
lectual men in every liberal and generous pursuit, 
and is therefore desirable to them, not only for the 
public welfare, "but for their own greatness and 
consideration, for every object of generous ambi- 
tion." In such a state, Poetry and Painting may 
perhaps look around in vain for Macenases. They 
need not despair if they find them not in individu- 
als — for they will find them in the multitude. 

" Unbroken spirits cheer ! still, still remains, 
The eternal patron Liberty, •v\^h6se flame. 
While she protects, inspires the noblest strains ; 
The best and sweetest far are toil-created gains." 

So many historical and biographical illustrations in 
the belles lettres, in jurisprudence, in the arts of 



^HE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 4l 

taste and design, in the numberless applications of 
science, all strongly corroborating the views I have 
just stated, are crowding upon my memory, that 
were I to recapitulate them in detail, I should weary 
your patience with a string of names and incidents 
already familiar to every reading man ; whilst I should 
be compelled to leave the remaining parts of my sub- 
ject wholly untouched. To them I must hurry, and 
I can speak of them but briefly. 

It is of the intellectual dangers, growing out of 
circumstances otherwise thus fruitful in blessings, 
that I purposed also to speak. The dangers of 
prosperity, more insidious than those of adversity, 
are often more fatal, and these are of that class. 

One of the most obvious of them, is the danger 
of falling into a conceited, smattering superficiality 
in consequence of that very universality of occupa- 
tion and inquiry which seems, in other respects, so 
propitious to the formation of a sound, comprehen- 
sive understanding, so useful to the man of books, 
so graceful to the man of business. Such superfi- 
ciality is undeniably one of the besetting sins of our 
reading men. It shows itself in the capacity of 
talking fluently upon all things, and of doing every 
thing ; and in the habit of talking inaccurately upon 
all things, and of doing every thing badly. It 
nourishes and sustains itself upon compends, abridg- 



42 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OP 

ments, extracts, and all the other convenient subsidia 
of improved education ; excellent things in their way, 
but like other great improvements of our day, wheel- 
ing you to the object of your journey, without per- 
mitting you to know much of the country you pass 
through. You may trace it by the small pedantry 
that commonly accompanies half knowledge. You 
may track it in legislative speeches and reports, in 
public documents and legal arguments, and even in 
judicial opinions, where facts, and numbers, and 
grave statements of argument and collations of 
authorities are all that is wanted ; but where their 
place is filled by puerile rhetoric, by common-place 
instances of Greek and Roman history, or by mouldy 
scraps of thumb -worn school-boy Latin — shabby 
finery at the best, and all of it out of place. Yet 
the temptation to the commission of such folly is not 
great, and the remedy is easy. No man can hope 
to know every thing within the knowledge of his 
whole race. Let him then study with diligent accu- 
racy that single branch of knowledge which it happens 
to be most his duty to know well, and he will have 
time and opportunity left to learn much more. Let 
him keep his curiosity awake, and his afiections alive 
to whatever concerns the welfare of his neighbor, 
his country, or his kind. He cannot then fail to 
learn much, and he will know how to use all he learns 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 43 

well. His understanding' will be tempered by use 
to that right medium that best brings the scattered 
and broken rays of light from all quarters, to con- 
verge upon any object on which the mind is called 
to fix its attention. 

This impatience of continuous systematic labor, 
and the hope of reaching by some new and short 
road those objects of human desire which the 
Creator has not less beneficently than wisely de- 
creed, should be gained only by the sweat of the 
brow or the toil of the mind — 

Pater ipse colendi 



Haud facilem esse viam voluit, — 

this same impatience of slow study that engenders 
the parading superficiality which I have just describ- 
ed, is often seen to produce still more serious effects 
upon the character and the whole course of life. 
Such effects are peculiarly apparent at the present 
time in our own country. 

In the wonderful and accelerated progress of this 
nation to wealth and greatness, the public mind is con- 
tinually surprised by the sudden apparition of enor- 
mous riches gained as it were in a moment, some- 
times seemingly by accident, sometimes the hasty fruit 
of a quick-eyed and bold sagacity. Then again in our 
political contentions, the unexpected mutation of po- 
pular favor frequently raises an individual at once to 



44 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

eminence from some humble professional walk, where 
he leaves his former superiors to toil on far beneath 
him. Under the strong excitements of such exam- 
ples, it is but natural that the ardent youth of ac- 
quirement and ability should be often tempted to 
look with disgust upon the slow returns of regular 
labor, whether in study or in business. He closes 
his books, or he flies from his office or counting-room, 
and rushes to the field of gambling speculation, or it 
may be of equally gambling politics, trusting to 
become immediately rich or great, by the favor of 
fortune, as others have become before him. 

Unquestionably in such a republic as ours, the 
rewards of public favor are legitimate objects of 
honorable ambition. So too in a country where 
population and capital are so rapidly augmenting, to 
neglect the means of securing to ourselves some 
share of that general prosperity, which long-sighted 
sagacity assures us must be the natural effect of 
causes already in action, would be to reject the 
goods which Providence tenders to our acceptance. 
But the great danger in this country, and especially 
at the present time, and pecuharly to the well-educa- 
ted young man, is that he is most strongly tempted to 
stake at once his whole chance of success and of hap- 
piness upon such uncertain contingencies and upon 
them alone ; turning with scorn from the sober 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 45 

certainties of life, as being worthy the attention of 
none but dull, plodding spirits. 

Now viewing this subject as a mere question of 
prudent calculation, we are met with the striking 
and certain fact, that the whole aggregate profits of 
mere speculative gain among us (throwing aside all 
account of the perhaps equal losses) are utterly insig- 
nificant in comparison with those of regular com- 
merce, or well directed industry in other pursuits. 
In the same way, and for precisely the same reasons, 
the highest honors and rewards of the mere political 
adventurer are just as paltry, when placed by the 
side of those of Marshall, and Wirt, and Dwight, 
of Wistar, or of White, and, I might add, many 
living names scarcely less honored than those of the 
venerated dead — whose long, steady, successful 
course of professional or of learned labor, was 
crowned by the universal and affectionate veneration 
of their countrymen. But if turning our view from 
external circumstances of wealth or of respect, we 
look to the influence of such a temper upon charac- 
ter and happiness, the contrast is still more striking. 
On the one side are domestic quiet, calm content, 
cheerful industry, well employed days and peaceful 
nights, and above all, a steady reliance on your own 
exertions — under the care of Heaven, the true secu- 
rity of independence and the best guarantee of vir- 



46 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

tue. Yet all this our youth are seen throwing aside 
to take in exchange the feversh excitement of 
the gambler, now elated into wild exultation, now 
harassed by doubt and fears, now weighed down by 
mortification, disappointment, and sorrow of heart — 
ay, and to take the gambler's hazardous, precarious 
fortunes too, his frequent, sudden and dreadful fluctu- 
ations from wealth to poverty, from power and splen- 
dor to beggary, a state of mind and of fortune leaving 
no room for domestic happiness, little for personal 
independence, hardly any for steady, straight-forward 
honesty. Nor let the young man flatter himself 
with the false hope, that all this is but for a time, and 
that when his fortunes are made, he will rest in 
safety. If he starts into life, risking every thing 
upon hazards like these, he is a doomed man. He 
must go on to the end of life as he begun. His 
early habits are incongruous with the calm, unex- 
citing details of ordinary life, and render his mind 
eventually incompetent for the ordinary duties of 
society. 

Against this danger there is but one sure safe- 
guard of intellectual disciphne. Rehgious and 
moral duty may indicate others. I am far from 
advising a timid abstinence from any creditable 
or honest undertaking that may offer strong in- 
ducements to enter upon it. Such advice would be 



The AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 47 

idle and ineffectual, if it were in other respects wise, 
and it is not wise in the times and country in which 
we live. The intellectual safe-guard I would re- 
commend is simply this : — to form your permanent 
habits and tastes to some study, some business, 
some profession, of common and constant utility: 
to become masters of this, familiar with it, fond of 
it. If afterwards more exciting avocations call you 
off for a time, to this you may always look as the 
agreeable and respectable employment of your pros- 
perous leisure, and upon this you may fall back in 
adversity, with the certainty of finding a sure pro- 
tection for your honor, your independence, and your 
virtue. 

There is another fault with which our country has 
been sometimes reproached, and this reproach, to 
which I have already alluded, much exaggerated as 
it is, is not without some foundation in reality. This 
degree of reality is again another of the evils that 
may befal the American scholar, and against which 
it most behooves him to guard. It has been said by 
shrewd though unfriendly observers, that in America 
the practical and the profitable swallow up every 
other thought. There, say they, fancy withers, art 
languishes, taste expires ; there the mind looks only 
to the material and the mechanical, and loses its 
capacity for the ideal and the abstract ; the sensuous 



48 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OP 

Understanding is vigorous, the pure reason is torpid 
and blind. It might seem that there were very httle 
reason to complain of our lot, if our nation effects 
every thing it attempts in the useful and practical ; 
and that the ideal and the abstract might will be left 
to others who have less of solid and material con- 
solation. Yet I think not exactly so ; and, first 
wholly protesting against the sweeping broadness 
of the charge — am willing to confess, that the 
American mind is peculiarly exposed to sujBfer in 
this very way. The demands upon talent for active 
service are so numerous and imperative, the compen^ 
sation and rewards for such service are so imme- 
diate and tempting, that the educated man is induced 
naturally to value the worth of knowledge by its 
direct utility. This is not amiss in itself, if it stop 
there, but he is often led on to take another step, 
and measure the degree of that utility by its value 
to his own interests — thus paring down utility to 
mere selfishness, and that too most commonly the 
selfishness of the coarsest and meanest material 
interests. To this, there are, it must be confessed, 
stronger temptations here than in other countries. 
On the other hand, there are here also stronger in- 
ducements to a more liberal habit of thought and a 
more generous course of action. If the facilities of 
advancing our personal interests are here numerous 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR, 49 

and absorbing, so again those interests will here be 
found to be peculiarly bound up and interwoven 
with those of our country and our neighbor. The 
prosperity of each man depends upon the prosperity 
of all. Every active citizen feels that he partakes 
largely of the practical and real, as well as of the 
theoretical sovereignty, and may make his own cha- 
racter and influence felt far and near. For the same 
reason, in all the operations of private enterprise, 
and in our public concerns, as the laws and principles 
regulating their action are evolved and manifested, 
even enlightened self-interest is constantly called to 
look to something loftier and more lasting than its 
own direct and immediate objects. Thus whilst the 
intelligent American citizen is surrounded by the 
strongest temptations to devote himself solely to 
selfish pursuits, he is at the same time every where 
invited to conform his own spirit to that of our 
liberal institutions, and instructed to uplift his mind 
to the consideration of large principles, and to re- 
gard himself as being but a small part of the vast 
whole which claims his best affections. 

With such a choice before him, pitiable indeed is 
the lot of him who turns from the nobler and 
manlier side, to think, to live, and to drudge for him- 
self alone. He cuts himself off from the best de- 
lights of the heart — its endearing charities and its 

7 



50 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

elevating sympathies. He paralyzes his own intel- 
lect by suffering it to become half dead through in- 
action, and that in its nobler parts. The mighty 
ladder of thought and reason, reaching from the visi- 
ble to the invisible — from the crude knowledge 
gained through the senses to the sublimest infer- 
ences of the pure reason — from the earth to the very 
footstool of God's own throne — is before him and 
invites his ascent. But he bends his eyes obsti- 
nately downwards upon the glittering ores at his 
feet, until he loses the wish or the hope fur any thing 
better. 

This, however, is but an extreme case, to be 
pointed out as a beacon to mark the covert peril. 
That such grovelling materiality, such mean selfish- 
ness, is not the necessary, nor the constant, no, nor 
the frequent result of our ardent industry in the 
affairs of life, let th€ discoveries of Franklin, and 
the magnificent far-drawn speculations of Edwards — 
let the grand philosophy, and the poetic thought, 
flashing quick and thick through the cloudy atmos- 
phere of political discussion in our senate-house — 
let the open-handed charity, the more than princely 
munificence, the untiring personal labors of bene- 
volence, exhibited by our most devoted and success- 
ful men of business, bear splendid testimony. 

There is yet a danger of quite another sort, that 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 51 

with us sometimes besets and misleads the Hterary 
man. Familiarized from youth with the glories and 
beauties of European literature, his ambition is early 
fired ta imitate or to rival its excellence. He forms 
to himself grand plans of intellectual exploits, all of 
them probably incongruous with the state and taste 
of his country, and most of them doubtless beyond 
his own ability. The embryo author projects epic 
poems, and in the mean while executes sonnets in 
quantities ; the artist feeds his imagination with ideal 
historical compositions on the scale and above the ex- 
cellence of those of Raphael ; the young orator 
dreams of rivalling the younger Pitt, and of ruling 
the nation by his eloquence, at the age of four-and- 
twenty. These enthusiasts enter the living world, 
and soon find that their expectations are but a 
dream. They discover either that the world rates 
their talent very differently from their own estimate 
of it, or else that the state of society about 
them is wholly adverse to its exercise in the 
direction or on the scale their ambitious fancy had 
anticipated. The coarse matter-of-fact character of 
our world begins to disgust them. They see duller 
school-fellows outstrip them in worldly success. 
They see the honors and profits of public office 
bestowed upon some whom they know to be un- 
worthy. The profits of trade and speculation 
are gathered before their eyes by the unlettered. 



52 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

Disappointed and disgusted, they are now tempted 
to ascribe their disappointment to the repnbhcan in- 
stitutions of their country ; not reflecting that it is im^- 
possible to enjoy all kinds of good at the same time ; 
that whatever is administered by men must be sub- 
ject to abuse ; and that to be happy and success- 
ful, every man must some how or other conform him^r 
self to the sphere where Providence has placed him. 
If the scholar gives way to this temptation, he 
becomes a discordant, jarring thing in society, har^- 
monizing with nothing near or around him. He 
dwells with a sort of complacent disgust upon 
every imperfection of our social state. He gradu^ 
ally becomes a rebel in heart to our glorious institur- 
tions. His affections and secret allegiance transfer 
themselves to some other form of government and 
state of society, such as he dreams to have formed 
the illustrious men and admirable things of his 
favorite studies — forms of government or states of 
society, such as he knows only by their accidental 
advantages without a ghmpse of their real and terri- 
ble evils. 

When this mental disease, for so it may be called 
without a metaphor, seizes irrecoverably upon the 
thoughts of the retiring, the sensitive, and timid 
lover of books and meditation, his capacity for useful 
exertion is ended ; he is thenceforward doomed to lead 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 53 

a life of fretful restlessness alternated with queru- 
lous dejection. On the other hand, should he be 
naturally a man of firmer temperament and sounder 
discretion, time and experience will sober down 
his fancies, and make him join in the labors of life 
with cool submission. Still he is in danger of being 
a soured and discontented man, occasionally com- 
pelled to feign what he does not feel, and always 
unsustained by that glad confidence, that eager zeal 
and gay hope, which ever cheer him who loves and 
honors his country, feels her manifold blessings, and 
is grateful for all of them. 

As various bodily diseases are observed to be spe- 
cially incident to their several particular arts, trades, 
and professions, so the malady I have just described 
seems in this country to be that to which men of 
purely literary cultivation are specially predisposed. 
The men of daily toil seem happily to live quite 
below the level of its agency, those of abstract in- 
quiry, of mathematical study, physical observation 
and high science, as much above it. 

The early history of American literature affords a 
distinguished example of this influence upon a most 
elegant, accomplished and brilliant mind. So 
modern are our American antiquities, that much of 
this early history is within the memory of men not 
beyond the middle of life, and such it happens to be 



54 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

in this instance. It is that of one once called the 
American Addison, and still justly regarded as a 
father of our native literature, the late Joseph Dennie. 
Nature had endowed him with the quickest taste 
for beauty, the keenest sensibility for all intel- 
lectual excellence. A scholar from his cradle, he 
became very soon, by practice, " a ripe and good 
one." His ready memory was stored to a degree 
unequalled by any one on this side the Atlantic, and 
surpassed by none on the other, except his contem- 
porary, the celebrated Porson. It was filled, crowded, 
bursting with the choicest beauties of thought, the 
rarest gems of expression that refined taste could se- 
lect from the most extensive range of reading. He 
united to this reading much originality of thought, a 
gay and sportive fancy, and an unsurpassed power of 
brilliant expression. He was a genuine enthusiast in 
his love of literature, and he made it the pleasure and 
the business of his life to propagate the same taste 
among his countrymen. In this he achieved much, 
but he would have accomplished very far more, had he 
not yielded to a strange, unwise and unhappy morbid 
dislike for the institutions and social order of his own 
country. This discolored his views and distorted 
his judgment. It enabled inferior, every-day men, to 
vex and thwart him in his best and most favorite de- 
signs. It abridged the influence of his opinions and 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 55 

of his taste, and broke down the authority of his 
criticism and his example. Worst of all, it iden- 
tified in the minds of the unlettered, the cause 
of elegant literature with that of attachment to 
foreign principles and establishments, and contempt 
for our own. Honest men reasoned, and correctly 
too, though from false premises, that if literature 
could be gained only at the expense of patriotic feel-' 
ing, it is best that we should go without it. It lessen- 
ed too the merit and value of his writings as literary 
compositions ; for it tended to strip them of the ori- 
ginal American air they would otherwise have had, 
-^ and to give them the common cast of mere English 
^ literature. Hence, instead of ranking with those of 
Irving, at the head of our literature, both in time and 
in merit, his works are already passing into oblivion. 
The same perverse prejudice had also, I fear, an un- 
happy effect upon the regular activity of his intellect 
and the course of his life. Peace to his spirit, and 
gratitude for his services to our commonwealth of 
letters at a time when most it wanted aid. But let 
the student take warning from his great and single 
error. 

I would not now have called forth his frailties from 
the tomb, did I not consider them as affbrding a 
most salutary and impressive lesson to the youthful 
enthusiast. More especially on a literary occasion 



56 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

like this, I could not have brought myself to speak 
thus publicly of the weakness of one whom I 
esteemed and honored, did I not firmly believe that 
it was for a purpose which his own gentle spirit, 
could he know of it, would approve, and could I 
not, at the same time, pay a cordial, heart-felt tri- 
bute to his many amiable and generous qualities, 
his worth, his accomplishment, and his genius. 

It is the happy privilege of Americans to be free 
from the necessity of miserable dependance upon 
the caprice of other men for their daily subsistence 
or enjoyments. An honorable pride of character is 
native to our soil. Our reason and our conscience 
are our own. No man need to seek for himself a- 
master, no man need to fawn upon a patron. Yet 
another danger, similar in effect to that from which 
we are thus exempt, yet quite opposite in its cause, 
threatens our mental liberty. It is that of slavery, 
not to one but to many, not to a patron but to a party. 
In our popular form of government, the existence of 
organized parties for the promotion of any system 
of policy, for the success of any principles of admi- 
nistration on which opinions are divided, and even 
for local objects and questions that must be decided 
ultimately by the ballot-boxes and legislative action, 
seems to be unavoidable, and when confined to their 
legitimate sphere, not only harmless but salutary. 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 57 

They keep up a more constant and exciting interest 
in public affairs through the whole community. 
They lead to a more vigilant watchfulness of those 
intrusted with power. They give greater stability 
and regularity to the action of government, and pre- 
serve it from becoming the sport of accident and 
caprice. But no dispassionate man, who examines 
the character of all our political parties for the last 
few years, can fail to perceive that there is some- 
thing in their organization threatening to defeat the 
primary object of their own formation, and injurious 
to personal honor and independence. 

The rule of a majority of the people is the fun- 
damental law of our institutions, and the will of the 
people has a right to be expressed on every question. 
But the modern doctrine loses sight of the people 
as a whole, and substitutes for loyalty to the people, 
fealty to party. It teaches the true liege-men of fac- 
tion to move together with the discipline and blind 
obedience of a regular army, and to regard those 
who do not act with them, not as republican fellow- 
citizens who differ fi'om them in opinion on some 
secondary thoughimportant points, but as aliens and 
enemies, persons not entitled to any weight in the 
nation, whose approval of the course of one of our 
friends is a good ground of suspecting his fidelity, 
and to act with whom, though on an insulated ques- 



58 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

tion and for obvious public good, is treason and de- 
sertion. We must add to this, that by the decision 
of party, is meant that of a bare majority of the 
party only, or more commonly that of its prominent 
leaders, assisted by a few active professional partisan 
politicians. Thus the preferences of the rest, cor- 
responding perhaps with a very large majority of the 
whole people numerically, are swallowed up in party 
allegiance. The result of all this is, that in a land 
of professed equal rights, one large portion of the 
citizens is politically disfranchised, until they can by 
the same discipline acquire power, and then disfran- 
chise their opponents. Under a constitution pro- 
fessing the will of the majority to be the supreme 
law, the most vital questions are settled by an active 
bold minority. Connected with all this, and as 
a most essential ingredient in the system, a bitter 
spirit of intolerance is nursed up, unjust to the mo- 
tives of adversaries, degrading to public men, and 
engendering narrow jealousies among the people. 
The public man is taught in his official character to 
look not to the welfare or the judgment of the peo- 
ple as a whole, but (what should be wholly subordi- 
nate) to the success and approbation of his party. 
Thus, means usurp the place of ends. The first 
who suffer the just punishment of this moral treason, 
for such it is, against republican principles, are the 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 59 

successful leaders themselves. They deprive them- 
selves at once of the honest enthusiasm, the cheerful 
confidence that ever accompany the zealous support 
of principles. They become the timid, temporizing 
slaves of expediency, looking at every step, not to its 
justice or wisdom, but to its probable popularity. 
Their own policy prevents them from relying for re- 
spect and support upon the broad judgment of all 
honest and enlightened men, and when age or ad- 
versity arrives, when " interest calls off all her sneak- 
ing train," they are left helpless and contemptible. 
Such being the pitiable condition of the Magnates of 
faction, what must be that of him who follows at 
their heels as a hireling — above all, of the educated 
and literary hireling'? He has sold his manhood 
for a little pelf ; he must revile, and he must glorify ; 
he must shout huzzas, or whisper calumnies, just as 
he is bidden. His time is not his own. His thoughts 
are not his own. His soul is not his own. 

Strange thing it is, but true, that in this our re- 
pubhc, the land of abundance, the native soil of in- 
dependence, there may be found some Americans 
of talent and information as abject in the submis- 
sion of their understanding and will to the dictation 
of another, as was ever the most awe-struck cour- 
tier of Louis XIV. or the Czar, and who can fawn 



60 THE ADVANTAGES AND DANGERS OF 

Upon the dispensers of office with a cringing ser- 
viHty that would have mantled with shame the cheek 
of the worst hireling of Walpole, or the most profli- 
gate parasite of Dubois, the scandal of the church, 
or of Jefleries, the reproach of the law. 

I have before said that I looked with undoubting 
confidence to the ultimate tendency of our free 
institutions, to elevate and purify the general mind. 
Nor do these things shake me in that conviction. 
They are but for a time. These dark clouds will 
pass away. They cannot quench the glorious sun 
of our republic. To-morrow — 

To-morrow, he repairs his golden beams, 
And floods the nation with redoubled ray. 

But their time is now. The evils are present. They 
are confined to no individuals, to no one party or 
faction. I have even feared that this spirit of in- 
tolerance and dictation was extending itself from the 
political into the social and the religious world. 
Even before the altars of the Most High, strange 
and unhallowed fires have been lighted up in the 
priest's censers. It is for our generous, educated, 
high-minded youth to stay this plague. Let them 
not think to keep themselves pure, by holding them- 
selves aloof from action. Let them take their stand 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. 61 

manfully as their own best judgment may dictate, 
in the political and religious divisions of our people ; 
but let them feel for those who honestly differ from 
them as for erring brethren. Be your zeal as fer- 
vent as it may, still temper it with a kind-hearted 
tolerance for the sincere and the honest. Reserve 
your warmest indignation for the narrow and bitter 
Pharisee, whether for you or against you, for the hypo- 
crite, the impostor, and the persecutor. Above all, 
reverence yourself, your country, and the principles 
for which you contend. Never sacrifice your own 
honor, and still less, the cause of religion or freedom, 
to the subsidiary means designed to promote them, or 
the external forms in which they may be invested. 

Go forth then, gentlemen, to your exalted duties. 
Go— sustain and elevate the high privileges of the 
American scholar. Shrink not from the dangers, 
yield not to the temptations that await you. 

The father of epic poetry, when Diomed rushes to 
the field, describes the goddess of wisdom as nerving 
her champion's arm with strength, filling his breast 
with courage, and circling his shield and spear and 
helmed head, with her own living fires. Even so — 
the Minerva of your distinguished college has armed 
you in the bright panoply of science, and fired your 
souls with a holier inspiration, than pagan antiquity 
could feign. Profane not those high gifts, disappoint 



62 THE ADVATAGES AND DANGERS OF, ETC. 

not the just expectations of the friends of learn- 
ing and liberty. Be true to yourselves and your 
country. 



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